Note to self #4

Over the past two days, I have completed only a little woodworking. Most of the evenings have been spent working on some project plans and watching House and Glee. But I have worked a little trying to complete the three drawers of my built-in; most of it in the mornings before work. It's nice outside now, and great just to raise the garage door and let the cool morning air in.

In the photo above, I have an unforeseen problem. After taking the trouble to mount the drawer slides properly and making sure that the interior of the cabinet as well as the drawers are nice and square, the front of the drawer is not parallel with the face frame. You can see this in the photo if you look closely at the space between the drawers and the face frame. When I add the oak drawer fronts, I am concerned that this will look bad.

I am not sure why this alignment problem exists. What I think is causing this is that when I joined the cross pieces of the face frame, these cross pieces stuck out slightly. I thought I could just sand them flush, but this unforeseen situation now exists.

I am not sure what to do about this. For anyone stopping by my blog - I welcome your thoughts on how to fix this. Note to self: make sure the face frame goes together properly next time.

Beth’s built-in: constructing the drawers, part two

This looks pretty good to me. I had planned to try some hand cut dovetails on the drawers for my project, but I remember seeing this article in Fine Woodworking and thought I would give it a try.

This week, I took the plunge and signed up for Fine Woodworking’s web resources. As far as I can tell, I have access to many of the articles from FWW's archives.

I did this so that I could download an article titled, “Fine Drawers without Dovetails.” I hope to someday take great pride in hand cut dovetail joints for drawers and case pieces. But, I have a lot on my plate right now and I need to make some attractive drawers pretty quickly. I had seen this interesting article which shows a nice drawer utilizing dowels for joinery which I like.

In the past, I have used biscuits - I can’t see how such a joint could fail, but the glue-up process is about as messy as it gets. This joint is difficult to clean up afterwards and in most cases, I end up painting the interior parts of the drawer.

So, I will be trying the method described by Hendrik Varju, author of the FWW article. He says that as far as his clients are concerned, these dowel strengthened joints are just fine with them. Here is how the process went for me...

The parts. Here I have the parts that make up the interior of the drawer box cut to final length and dadoes cut for the plywood bottom and the back.

Adding the dowels. These are 1/4" oak dowels. I will use three at each joint. Even without glue, this joint is very strong.

A sharp saw. I bought this pull saw for my last project and it is super sharp. It takes only a few pulls to cut the dowel just about flush with the drawer side.

The mostly finished drawer. Here the plywood bottom has been added, all the dowels are in place, and everything is sanded. The oak drawer front has not yet been added. A have designed the built-in to have graduated drawers. This is the smallest of the three drawers.

The middle drawer. I had wanted to have all three drawers finished by today. But, at least I have the middle drawer sanded and glued up. I still have to add the dowels, bottom and the oak.

The third drawer. The third drawer waiting on the glue to dry.

Here is what they will look like. The drawer fronts will be the same quarter sawn red oak that I used on the face frame. I plan to use some simple oak knobs.

Tune into my next post to see the completed drawers. Once that is done, all I have left to do is to make the shelves and the construction part of this project will be complete. Of course, I have to stain and finish it, and then, I have to open up the wall, add framing and install the built-in. Still a lot to do.

To see all the posts on this project including design aspects, click here.

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Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. Or jump over to Facebook and leave me a message. And if you like this post or this project, you can subscribe to my blog by clicking here.

My top three projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. My foyer project.

Beth's built-in: constructing the drawers, part one

My desk. Not only has my table saw served as my workbench, the extension table has become my desk. Here, I lay out the technical stuff for the Blum drawer slides I selected.

When I think about making the drawers for the built-in, the first thing I have to do is select the drawer slides which will determine how wide I can make the drawers. But I quickly ran into a problem. The inside depth of the built-in is fourteen inches which is an odd size for a drawer slide. I could easily find suitable slides online, but I did not want to wait for them to be delivered. I went to Woodcraft and the Home Depot, but concealed slides to fit were not available. In a last ditch effort, I remembered a cabinet hardware speciality store in Birmingham called HGH Hardware. After looking over their in-stock slides, I selected the ones shown below. I am not thrilled with the almond color, but they should not be visable.

A tryout. This is the first time I have used these slides, so the next step is to mark where they will go along the inside of the lower cabinet. I purposefully designed the lower cabinet to align with the inside of the face frame while the top section is wider. I can simply mount these slides to the inside of the cabinet.

Aligning the slides. Here I use a scrap piece of wood cut to the same length as the height of the drawer slide. This helps me precisely locate both ends of this drawer slide as well as the one for the opposite side. I then cut the scrap to help locate the remaining slides.

Making progress. With the slides mounted, I can permamently attach the face frame using glue, clamps and pocket screws. In this photo, you see the built-in which is in an upright position for the first time thanks to the new saw horses I made.

What it will be. I have been working on my SketchUp drawing of this project (click to enlarge). I had abandoned it for a while, but decided that an illustration was necessary to help visualize certain aspects of this project. My SketchUp skills are improving.

This week it is off to Lowes to purchase some half inch craft wood for the drawer boxes. I need to first decide how I will join the various sides of the drawers. I am toying around with the idea of cutting dovetails by hand - a big deal for me. Hopefully, I will have the boxes of all three drawers completed by this time next week.

To see all the posts on this project including design aspects, click here.

________________________

Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. And if you like this post or this project, you can subscribe to my blog by clicking here.

My top three projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. My foyer project.

Beth's built-in: some new shop helpers

In the way. I need to find a new home for my current project while I complete it.

I have a goal with each new project to do something to upgrade my shop. For my last project, I made a couple of jigs and bought two six foot pipe clamps. With my current project, the built-in cabinet I am making for my daughter's bathroom, I need to find a place for it to reside while I continue to build it. Right now, it rests on my workbench which isn't ideal for two reasons: first, I am once again relegated to using my table saw as a workbench and second, standing it upright helps me better visualize what it will look like when completed.

New sawhorses. Today, I completed a couple of sawhorses which are about the right height for my project. Note the three designs on the first page of the "201 Tips" magazine article above. I am making the middle sawhorse (click the photo to enlarge).

This is a situation where I am not going to design some really unique sawhorses. I am basically going to copy some I found in Fine Woodworking's "201 Tips for Woodworkers" which was a gift this past Christmas from my wife. I write a very brief review of this special publication here.

These sawhorses were designed by Christian Becksvoort. Now building anything that Mr. Becksvoort has designed would be a honored addition to my shop, even if it is just sawhorses. Becksvoort's article suggests that a shop should have a set of three sawhorse designs, one set which is one foot tall, another that is two feet and still a third which is three feet and adjustable to be even taller. He writes that these three heights are most useful as helpers in his shop. I plan to make a couple of each, but right now I am focusing on making two of the two foot version.

Getting started. I stopped by Lowes on the way home and bought the necessary stock to complete this project. Most of it is their "Top Choice" lumber, which can be anything but choice lumber, but I did find some decent boards. I can get all four legs from this one piece of lumber.

Making copies. Here, my saw blade is tilted to 11 degrees and I use a stop block clamped to my fence to make repetitive cuts and legs that are exactly the same length.

The legs. Here are the completed legs, all exactly the same.

Building up the thickness. The thickness of the cross pieces is achieved by glueing two 1x boards together. Note that I use a premium grade of pine for the top of this glue-up and the lower quality "Top Choice" board for the bottom.

Notches. Here I use my bandsaw to cut out notches for the legs. My saw table is tilted to 11 degrees.

Looking good. The cross pieces completed with notches for the legs cut.

Hard to do. This kind of photography is hard to do correctly. Here I hold the board with one hand, the camera with the other and I use eyes that can't see very well. This is my excuse for the out of focus screws set at nearly the same angle as the 11 degree bevel at the end of the board.

My old horses. These old, rickety sawhorses will soon be dismantled and probably used for scrap wood.

First set completed. I plan to make two of each of Christian Becksvoort's three sawhorse designs. The three footers will be next.

Tomorrow, I will be back to working on the built-in with finishing the faceframe and mounting the drawer slides coming up next.

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Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. And if you like this post or this project, you can subscribe to my blog by clicking here.

My top three projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. My foyer project.

Hey Jeff, what have you been working on?

Work tools. Here are the tools I use to illustrate the ebook I am working on: Google SketchUp, Diet Mountain Dew, and Crimson Tide football tailgate music.

I'm glad you asked. This past week has been all about two things:

1. Making progress on my first ebook which will be the plans and steps I took to construct a coffered ceiling in the living room of my home.
2. Getting ready for the University of Alabama season opening football game against San Jose State.

As far as the ebook goes, I have been writing and re-organizing it this week. I am using Google SketchUp to re-create the steps I went through to build my coffered ceiling since it was many years ago that I added this treatment to my living room ceiling. I did not have a digital camera then and the idea that I would someday offer downloadable plans via a thing called a blog was not even a consideration.

A work in progress. I am working on a cross-section view of one box in my coffered ceiling. This has been time consuming. The drawing above is incomplete, lacking some of the needed molding.

Yesterday, my wife gave me free reign to spend as much time as I wanted with SketchUp. I am slowing figuring this software out. I once again traded emails Tim Killen who writes at Fine Woodworking's SketchUp blog called "Design. Click. Build. " because I could not figure out how to draw mitered angles on some of the parts.

UPDATE:
My ebook is finished and you can get the full document as a free download by clicking here.

Now, about University of Alabama football: both my wife and I graduated from Alabama and my daughter is a sophomore there. In case you did not know, the Crimson Tide won the national championship last year. So, Alabama football is critical for us this season. We went to the game this past Saturday against San Jose State and the atmosphere was electric. We arrived on campus at 11:00 am for a 6:00 pm kickoff. The Quad, a large grassy field at the center of campus, turns into a tailgating competition prior to the game...

The Quad before the game. Crimson Tide football includes pre-game festivities on the Quad. Note the crimson attire, satellite TV dishes, a guy singing and playing guitar, and the cute little girl that greets us with a "Roll Tide." That's my wife and daughter walking in front of me.

The team arrives. In this photo, the mighty Crimson Tide runs onto the field. The stadium has recently been expanded to seat almost 102,000 fans. The sky boxes between the large video monitors and the seating above them are new. Still, about 9,000 fans were turned away.

So, woodworking this fall will include me listening to the game on my radio and running upstairs to see the replay of key downs on TV since I don't have TV in my basement shop.

I will continue to work on my ebook this week as well as the built-in cabinet for my daughter's bathroom. To see my original post on the coffered ceiling project, click here.

________________________

Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. And if you like this post or this project, you can subscribe to my blog by clicking here.

My top three projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. My foyer project.